


Read My Mind: Twenty Years Ago

by anissa7118, kalalanekent



Series: Little Secrets AU [1]
Category: Superman (Christopher Reeve Movies), Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Superman Returns (2006)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-22
Updated: 2009-08-22
Packaged: 2019-09-05 09:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16808332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anissa7118/pseuds/anissa7118, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalalanekent/pseuds/kalalanekent
Summary: A brief peek into the lives of Lana Lang, Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and Richard White, set twenty years before Little Secrets. Written for the timestamp meme on LiveJournal.





	Read My Mind: Twenty Years Ago

_On the corner of main street_  
Just tryin' to keep it in line.  
You say you wanna move on and  
You say I'm falling behind.  
  
Can you read my mind?  
Can you read my mind?  
  
I never really gave up on  
Breakin' out of this two-star town.  
I got the green light,  
I got a little fight.  
I'm gonna turn this thing around.  
  
Can you read my mind?  
Can you read my mind?

**The Teenage Queen…**

“No, Brad,” Lana said, allowing a little of her irritation to show in her voice. “I told you it was over. I meant it.”

He protested, of course, and Lana studied her nails while paying scant attention to him. Their big breakup argument had been a week ago, and she hadn’t wanted to take his calls afterward, but her mother insisted. The poor boy was calling three and four times a day, and had even come to the house uninvited. Fortunately Lana hadn’t been home at the time, but her mother was right; she had to say _something_ to him.

“I’m busy Friday,” she replied, cutting off his wheedling attempt to set a date.

“With what?” Brad asked, sounding churlish. “There’s another guy, isn’t there?”

“Brad!” Lana finally snapped. “My mother and I are going to visit some colleges. We’ll be gone all week, checking out campuses.”

They both went silent for a long moment, remembering the argument that had led to their breakup. Brad had come over one day to snuggle on the front porch swing. Lana, on the other hand, was busy reading college brochures, looking over applications, and finding information about grants, scholarships, and student loans.

She wasn’t in the mood to cuddle, but was too polite to tell him to leave, so he wound up sitting beside her, trying to carry on a conversation. Eventually he’d grown impatient with only having part of Lana’s attention, and he’d blurted out, “Why’re you bothering with college, anyway? It’s not like you’re gonna have a career or something.”

He’d snorted contemptuously as Lana stared at him wide-eyed. “You don’t want to be one of those women who try so hard to be a man, bring home the bacon, thinking you’re smarter than everyone else just ‘cause you have a fancy degree. I’ll get a job with my uncle’s truck company, we’ll get married, and you’ll stay home with the kids. Maybe you can work part-time at the store, just for a little spending money, but I’ll take care of you…” Brad had trailed off into fond dreams of their future.

Lana had been horrified.

Oh, she liked Brad well enough, they’d been going out for years, but she hadn’t planned on starting a family right out of school. And she _really_ couldn’t see herself as a trucker’s wife – the long lonely days while he was out of town would drive her insane. On top of that, she finally realized that Brad bore a grudge to anyone more intelligent than himself. To date Lana, he had to make himself think she was just another pretty, empty-headed girl, and if she went to college he’d wind up hating her.

He rambled on about a woman’s place in the world and how when they started going to college and taking full-time jobs, that had been the death of the American family ideal. Lana had finally just stood up, taken off his letter jacket, and handed it back to him. The actual breakup had been half-hysterical for its unexpectedness, but Lana had told him in no uncertain terms that she was through with him right before she slammed the front door in his face.

“Lana?” His voice was hesitant on the phone. “You’re … you’re really serious about college, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Brad,” Lana said, feeling a little sorry for him.

There was another long pause before he said, “Well, good luck then.”

“Thank you,” Lana replied. “Good luck to you, too, Brad.” And before he could gather his wits enough to make another attempt at reconciliation, Lana hung up the phone.

Wherever life was leading her, it wasn’t a future with Brad.

…

**The Loaded Gun…**

“Watch your sister.” Oh, how Lois Lane hated those words. Sure, she loved Lucy, but watching a little kid was _boring_. And a humiliating reminder of exactly what her father thought she was good for. Babysitting wasn’t high on the list of Lois’ priorities; she’d much rather be hanging around the house, eavesdropping on the conversation between her parents. But no, Lucy had toddled up to the General and asked to be taken to the park.

If Lois had done that, at any age, she would’ve gotten the brush-off, perhaps a scolding for interrupting an adult. Lucy, on the other hand, got picked up and cuddled before General Sam ordered Lois to take her to the park. And that was how the young teenager found herself pushing her little sister on the swing, Lucy’s blonde hair flying out behind her.

Lucy laughed aloud, leaning back to look at Lois as she swung. The pure adoration in those blue eyes pained Lois; she wanted so very badly to hate her little sister, but she just couldn’t. She had every right to sibling rivalry; Lucy got spoiled by the same father who was perpetually disappointed in Lois. She had the angelic personality to match her cherubic looks, and everyone who met the family adored little Lucy. Momma loved them both equally, but Lois secretly suspected that in the garden of Momma’s heart, Lucy was the rose, and Lois was the thorns. Besides, any time Momma took Lois’ side, it started an argument with General Sam.

That was fine; Lois would show them all. Let her sister be pretty and adorable and nice. Lois would be remembered; one day, her name would be in bold print on the front page of the biggest newspaper she could find. She was going to be a reporter, and a damn good one; she was going to win the Pulitzer Prize. Then her father’s slights wouldn’t matter, because everyone in the country would know her name.

“Higher!” Lucy called, her voice trilling, and Lois let her simmering anger at her father express itself in her next push. Lucy shrieked in delight as the swing soared so high that she could look up and see the ground.

…

**The Drop-Dead Dream…**

Bracing his elbows against the edge of his desk, Richard White leaned forward to peer through the magnifying glass. His hands were as steady as they’d ever get, and he held his breath as he gently fished the decal out of the water with a toothpick. It hadn’t wrinkled; quickly, he transferred it to the fuselage of the model airplane he was building.

His mother _hated_ this hobby. Richard’s room tended to smell of super-glue, balsa wood, paint, and the dope that was used to bind the silk covering the intricate model frames. Four completed models hung from the ceiling, the largest with a five-foot wingspan. He’d made several others, but he only had room for five. The others, a few of his earlier efforts with simple kits, he’d sold or given away.

The gull-wing model Richard was currently working on was his pride. It didn’t come with a kit – it was sold as a set of plans. The aspiring flyer had to buy balsa wood and cut out all the parts, buy and install all the wiring and servos, cover it in authentic silk and dope, and paint it. Richard was nearly finished; he’d given the plane an accurate cherry-red paint job, and was now affixing the decals that made it look like the real thing. He had several hundred dollars in this project; he’d actually gotten a summer job just to support his hobby, bagging groceries at Publix.

Sylvia couldn’t understand how her son could spend so much money on remote-control planes. She’d thrown a fit when he had spent his entire first paycheck on the kit, and Richard had never told her how much the transmitter cost. At least Richard was a good flyer; he’d never crash-landed one of his good models, and the few times he’d gotten them caught in trees, he’d been able to climb up and get them.

There, the decal was perfect. Richard sighed in contentment and leaned back, feeling the cramps in his shoulders from too much detail work. Another of Sylvia’s complaints was that constantly hunching over his desk working on models would ruin Richard’s posture. That had been one of the rare occasions when Theo contradicted her. He pointed out that he had always been the one to drive the boy out to the model airfield, and he’d seen his son fly the planes. When he was staring up at the sky, controlling every tiny motion of the miniature aircraft by the transmitter in his hand, Richard leaned back far enough to counteract any ill effects from actually building the planes.

Richard snickered. His mother hadn’t been able to come up with a reply to that. It sounded patently ridiculous, but then, so did her argument. Eventually she must’ve seen that Richard’s posture wasn’t suffering, so she moved on to the money he spent and the fumes associated with model-making.

The one thing she couldn’t see was how badly Richard longed to escape. He loved anything that flew – birds, planes, hot air balloons, anything that shrugged off its tethers and soared high above the dull earth. Richard craved that freedom more than anything else.

It wasn’t that Sylvia was a bad mother; on the contrary, she was a little too good of a mother. She worried constantly about her son, reminding him to take his vitamins every morning and wear his jacket whenever the temperature dipped below 70. Richard had been delighted to go to kindergarten on his first day, racing around the classroom without a second glance at his mother, who was wondering aloud if perhaps she ought to keep him home another year.

His teacher, Mrs. Brown, had dealt with overprotective moms before and managed to shoo Sylvia out. Richard had blossomed in her class, becoming an extroverted class clown who managed not to cause _too_ much trouble. Unlike a lot of kids, he _loved_ school and wished he could go seven days a week. Over the years, his teachers both challenged him and let him work things out for himself, two experiences he never got at home.

School had given him the confidence to argue with his mother about some things. Richard built the model airplanes over her protests so he could have a taste of freedom, and he also watched horror movies for a thrill of danger, however vicarious.

Freedom and danger, the two things Richard craved most: it was little wonder he secretly dreamed of becoming a pilot.

…

**The Chosen One…**

Clark Kent stood at his father’s grave, the setting sun throwing long shadows across the cemetery, striping the grass with alternating bands of darkness and light. A slight breeze played with his hair, setting free the one curl at his forehead that always seemed to fall in his eyes. Smoothing it back, Clark sighed, trying to figure out how to begin. Given how tongue-tied he felt, he was going to be here a while, so he sat down beside the grave.

The tall teenager couldn’t quite articulate his whirling thoughts. “Well, Pa, I graduated,” he said at last. “Straight A’s, too. I just… Everything’s changing.”

That sounded lame to his own ears, and he laughed. Didn’t everyone say that as they left high school? No more yellow bus to school each morning, no more long summers off, no more cafeteria camaraderie. All around him, people complained of the changes in their lives as twelve years of public schooling gave way to college and careers. Most of the other kids were trying to enjoy one last wild summer before they had to become responsible adults; the Sheriff’s Department was still trying to figure out who’d painted the Wilson’s barn bright orange and purple.

Clark felt like a still, small eddy in a great swirling river. He was a good kid, rarely indulging in the hell-raising antics of his peers. Ironically, the other teens were bemoaning the changes in their lives, and they had nothing to compare to _his_ trials. Not only had Clark just lost his father this year – the sapling he and Ma had planted at the grave was still little more than a brave twig – but a whole other set of issues had raised themselves right after Jonathan’s death.

He’d only recently learned the truth about his own life, and that knowledge threatened to color his perceptions of everything else. His mother and father weren’t his birth parents; his hometown wasn’t on the same planet as his birthplace; he wasn’t even human, wasn’t the same species as all of the people he regarded as family and friends.

It was a lot to process, and he wished Pa were still here to help him think it through. Ma was still coping with her own grief, and Clark didn’t want to burden her with his problems. It had been enough that she finally told him the truth, that morning when she’d found him in the barn cellar, holding a crystal and staring at the ship that had brought him to this planet.

 _Who am I?_ Lots of kids his age asked themselves that, but it meant a little more for Clark than it did for them. All along, he’d thought he was just lucky – that some chance blessing had given him his speed and strength and invulnerability. But now he had to confront the fact that those things came from his … _alien_ heritage.

The word still bothered him. But he had been raised to confront his fears, to seek the truth, to do what was right even if it might be unpleasant. So there was only one thing he could do: learn about his background.

The natural curiosity that had led Ma to encourage him toward a journalistic career also served him now. A whole alien civilization, one that the world around him didn’t even know existed, and all of its secrets were his birthright. Somehow, Clark knew that the crystal would be the key to unlock all of those mysteries.

Now he just had to find a place of solitude in which to explore them.

_Oh well I don't mind, if you don't mind_  
'Cause I don't shine if you don't shine  
Before you jump,  
tell me what you find  
when you read my mind.

_The stars are blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun.  
Can you read my mind?_

~ **The Killers** , _**Read My Mind**_


End file.
